A grievous epiphany about sugar-free cough drops!!!

Since coming back from Washington, I've been battling a nagging, linegring cold (I shouldn’t have taken a shower and walked out in that 30 degree weather as we headed out to the airport) that seriously congested my sinuses and lungs. I had real thick stuff (mucus if you really want to know) clogging up my chest that I couldn't cough out no matter how hard I tried. I was coughing incessantly like a dog too. At some point, I was coughing so hard, the muscles in my ribs hurt. So I came to work refusing to call-in sick unless ordered to go home by my supervisor (bad idea, because most of my co-workers got the sickness from me as well); to minimize the nagging coughing spells from an itchy throat, I brought with me a bag of Halls cough drops - the sugar free kind. For most of the afternoon, I scarfed down those cough drops like they were going out of style! By early evening when everyone had left the office, I was stricken with a new malady: a serious tummy ache! By 8 PM I realized to my utter horror and discrete embarrassment what the tummy ache meant - I was about to have a serious case of the runs! And run to the office restroom I went (thank goodness it was night time; with only two other co-workers in the office with me, no one would know ever know of my dirty little secret). A few weeks later, I found out through a co-worker that sugar-free products have that effect on certain people (she did not know or hear of my misadventure - I hope); she said her sister has that type of reaction to it and the runs was the serious side effect. Now I didn't bother to research this on the net but after I stopped consuming the cough drops, the sore stomach - and that side effect - did not bother me again. So proceed with caution with the sugar free stuff.